BISMARCK, North Dakota: Federal prosecutors have accepted the plea of a former North Dakota lawmaker who was one of the most important people in the Legislature. He admitted to going to Europe to pay for sex with a minor.
The 80-year-old Grand Forks Republican who used to be a state senator signed the plea deal last week. It was turned in on Monday. He agreed to plead guilty to traveling with the plan to do sexual things that are illegal.
The plea deal says that the prosecutors will suggest the lightest sentence possible and will move to drop Holmberg’s other charge of receiving or trying to receive material containing sexual abuse of children. As part of the deal, he would have to sign up as a sex offender.
The document says the worst punishment is 30 years in jail, a $250,000 fine, and being released under supervision for life. Mark Friese, an attorney for Holmberg, said that prosecutors are expected to suggest a prison sentence of three to four years. He said that the court would set up a plea hearing and order a presentence investigation report. This fall is most likely when the sentence will be given, he said.
For the travel crime, there is no minimum sentence, but for the receipt crime, there is one: five years in jail in the very least.
From about June 2011 to November 2016, prosecutors said Holmberg went to Prague, Czech Republic, many times to pay for sex with a child. In October 2023, the charge against Holmberg was made public.
From 1976 to the middle of 2022, Holmberg was a member of the Legislature. He first said he wasn’t running for re-election, but he quit after The Forum of Fargo-Moorhead reported that he had sent dozens of text messages to a guy in jail for child sexual abuse.
His trial was set to start in Fargo in September. At first, he said he wasn’t guilty.
Holmberg was the head of the powerful Senate Appropriations Committee, which writes budgets, for a long time. He was also the head of the Legislative Management panel, which runs the Legislature’s work between sessions every two years. He was able to plan his own trips because of that job.
The Associated Press got records that showed Holmberg went on a lot of trips in the U.S. and other countries since 1999. Cities in more than 30 states, Canada, Puerto Rico, and Norway were among the places they went.
The North Dakota School Boards Association gave back about $142,000 to the state and stopped participating in the Global Bridges teacher exchange program earlier this year. This was done months after Holmberg was charged with fraud and travel records were made public showing that he used state funds to travel to Prague and other European cities in 2011, 2018, and 2019. It’s not clear if the wrongdoing that the police say happened on any of those trips.
Source: AP